What is your Doctor Who Head Canon?
Does the show start in 1963 and go up to the present day?
Or have you dismissed everything since 1989?
Do the spin off shows count?
The Virgin/BBC books? Did they really "happen"?
Well, you get the idea.....
What is your head canon?
To be honest, it has now reached the stage for me where anything after 1989 has been dismissed. And only the Target books count.
Brutal, I know, but I think that since the fans took over the asylum the show and all it's peripheries have mutated into a thing with a few good moments but otherwise forgettable nonsense.
I think there is also something to be said of that old style of production and creation that was done on a wing and a prayer, with barely any budget or time. Wonderful, imagination capturing things still resulted.
Now it all seems to be clever-clever writing, glib companions with smart alec dialogue in the face of jeopardy, who are not remotely excited that they are travelling through time and space with an alien and a showrunner's tendency to rewrite the mythology and dna of the show, to the point where one of those sassy and glib companions told him which Tardis to nick.
No thanks.
The comic strips etc of the classic era also get a kind of affectionate pass for me even though they are not technically canon, simply because of their nostalgia value.
Big Finish started as a nice idea, but seems to have descended into well made releases designed to make sequels to every classic show and extract our money from us.
So, no thanks to them as well. (Although I did appreciate their doing both the stage plays and NIGHTMARE FAIR, MISSION TO MAGNUS and THE HOLLOWS OF TIME from the lost season 23.
I know this is an old post but your part about the fans does make me wonder.
I often feel the show doesn't know how to do fanservice - look at the last series, not really anything classic but then sometimes with Moffat it felt the opposite, like they were trying too hard but often in the wrong places e.g. let's bring all the daleks back including the only seen once special weapon dalek and make that a selling point (yet not really use them and have them there just for the sake of it).
The last few years I have been getting into big finish and I do enjoy most of their stuff but I don't think I fully class it as cannon which I know will annoy a few people. Yes Night of the doctor did bring up big finish companions but sometimes it can also cause issues. For example an episode is set in Pompeii with the 7th doctor and mel which if big finish is cannon would mean at the same time 10 is there stopping an alien plot and surely he would have noticed himself. I kind of take them as a separate thing that might sometimes be used in the show.
I also think Big Finish's main issue is it's hard to get into - yes there are deals but someone just starting now would have to pay a lot of money to listen to just a few. Most people are used to buying a series boxset and getting multiple episodes for often a similar price to one big finish audio. There are some free, but it is still hard to get into. Apparently they don't make a lot of profit especially after the costs for the actors, but it just makes it harder for people to get in.
It's a shame they can't do a kind of Netflix streaming thing where you pay monthly and can stream the stuff - you could even add different tiers and have new releases not included. People would maybe buy the new stuff, as it would be cheaper than buying everything.
Also some audios do require listening to previous stuff, often being linked to stuff from years previously and sometimes not even in the main release
I'm willing to accept every single BBC episode as my personal Canon, from Hartnell to the ten seconds we've seen of Whittaker.
But not that stupid American TV movie with Paul McGann, because it sucked. And not the books or comics or radio adaptations, because I haven't seen or read any of them.
Just the far superior Peter Cushing movies! 😛
shareI count everything up to Matt Smith's last story! After that it was absolute rubbish. And it wasn't that good during Smith's time either, but his fell into the anniversary year so I felt compelled to collect it but not Capaldi's time and certainly not her traversty!!!
JB